A skin cosmetic composition such as typically lotion is desired to be able to impart excellent actual feelings of effectiveness in use, such as a feeling of skin absorption or skin penetration, a feeling of non-stickiness, and a skin-softening effect after application thereof to the skin. Incidentally, a phospholipid that is a main ingredient of lecithin is known as a constituent component of biomembrane, and has heretofore been used as a high safety naturally-derived surfactant. Furthermore, as being a biomembrane constituent component, the phospholipid has a good affinity to skin and is therefore specifically noted as a component having excellent actual feelings of effectiveness in use, and its practical use to cosmetic bases has been made (for example, see Patent Reference 1).
However, the incorporation of lecithin into a low-viscosity cosmetic composition such as lotion or the like, may cause a precipitation. Accordingly, for increasing the dispersibility thereof, lecithin is often used along with a nonionic surfactant (for example, see Patent Reference 2). A nonionic surfactant can enhance the stability of the system, but when incorporated too much, it tends to detract from the effects of actual feelings in use specific to lecithin.
Consequently, it is desired to develop a cosmetic composition excellent in stability not detracting from the actual feelings of effectiveness in use specific to lecithin.
As the prior art close to the present invention using lecithin, there are known a method comprising dissolving a phospholipid such as soybean lecithin or the like in a polyalcohol that acts as a good solvent, then adding thereto another polyalcohol that acts as a poor solvent to form a lamellar liquid crystal, and gradually and dropwise adding thereto water or an aqueous solution to prepare an aqueous dispersion of fine liposomes (see Patent Reference 3), and a solubilized transparent cosmetic composition containing a specific monoacyl-type phospholipid (see Patent Reference 4). However, these patent references do neither describe nor suggest an idea of obtaining a cosmetic composition which is excellent in stability not detracting from the actual feelings of effectiveness in use specific to lecithin and has a translucent to transparent appearance.